The Scepter's Return

by Harry Turtledove

  Grus gauged the ground and grimaced. He feared Hirundo was right. He didn’t want to send a man—or, more likely, several men—to death with no hope of success. But the battle hung in the balance. Part of being a king was doing things that needed doing, no matter how unpleasant they were. “I think you’d better—” he began.

  He never finished giving the order. As they had not long before, he and Hirundo both cried out together. This time, though, they whooped with delight instead of shouting in anger and dismay. The officer in charge of the Avornans on the hill charged into the rear of the Menteshe without orders from anybody. Seeing what he ought to do, he went and did it.

  He could hardly have timed the move better. The nomads had just discovered that they couldn’t go forward anymore. Now they had enemy soldiers coming at them from behind, as they’d hoped to come at the Avornans. Thrown into confusion, they started streaming away toward the south. They were brave, yes, but they had never been much for taking a beating to no purpose.

  “Push them!” Grus yelled. “Punish them! Make them sorry they ever tried to fight us! By the gods, they’d better be!”

  The Avornans did what they could. It was less than Grus had hoped for, though not less than he’d expected. The Menteshe could flee faster than his men could pursue. They wore less armor to weigh them down. And they did not have to worry about keeping good order as they galloped away. The Avornans did, lest the nomads re-form and counterattack. A lot of the Menteshe, then, managed to escape.

  “We beat them,” Hirundo said. “We drove them back.” He allowed himself a long, loud sigh of relief.

  “We should have done more.” But Grus could not make himself sound too disappointed. They had won. They had driven the Menteshe back. “For a while there, I wasn’t sure we were going to keep our heads above water.” That was putting it mildly.

  “Me, too, Your Majesty.” Hirundo sighed again, this time theatrically. “When they broke through there … They had a better general than anyone we’ve seen in charge of them before. And, I’m afraid, the general we had could have done a better job.” He made a wry face.

  “I’d be angrier at you if the nomads hadn’t fooled me, too,” Grus said.

  Hirundo shook a finger at him—a fussy, foolish sort of thing to see on a battlefield. “Aren’t you paying me to be smarter than you are?”

  “I suppose I am,” Grus admitted. “But we both got by with being stupid this time.” He paused. “We’ll want prisoners, too, quite a few of them. I need to know who was in charge of the Menteshe, and who fought for him.”

  “He was formidable, whoever he was,” Hirundo said.

  Grus hadn’t been thinking about the enemy general just then, though Hirundo was right. He’d been wondering about the overlord that general served. Had Sanjar’s men attacked him? Had Korkut’s? Or had their warriors joined forces, perhaps under the banner of the Banished One?

  Avornan soldiers brought Menteshe prisoners before him. Some of the captives spoke Avornan. He used an interpreter to talk to the others. One by one, he asked them, “Which overlord do you follow?”

  Some of them said, “Korkut.” Some said, “The Fallen Star.” And some said, “Sanjar.” That helped him very little.

  He tried a different question, asking, “Which overlord commanded your army?”

  Most of the Menteshe answered, “Bori-Bars,” which gave him the name of their general.

  Then Grus asked, “Which prince does Bori-Bars serve?” Some of the nomads gave Sanjar’s name, others Korkut’s. Grus scratched his head. He didn’t see how one general could serve both princes. For that matter, neither did the Menteshe. They shouted angrily at one another. Grus summoned Pterocles, wondering whether the wizard could get to the bottom of it.

  Pterocles looked at the prisoners. He listened to them. He cocked his head to one side, intently studying them. He muttered under his breath. “I think I am going to have to try a spell,” he said. “This is … interesting.”

  “Glad to intrigue you,” Grus said.

  The spell the wizard used reminded Grus a little of the one he employed to free the thralls. It involved a clear crystal swinging on the end of a silver chain and flashes of light. These weren’t rainbow flashes, though; they were sparks of clear green light, the color of freshly sprouted grass in bright spring sunshine. The Menteshe smiled as the sparks swirled around them.

  Pterocles wasn’t smiling; his face wore a mask of intense concentration. After he had used the spell on three or four nomads, he turned to Grus and said, “It’s very interesting.”

  “What is?” Grus asked, as he was surely meant to do.

  “It’s something less than thralldom and something more than nothing,” the wizard replied. “It makes the Menteshe … believe whatever they’re told, you might say. They all heard that this Bori-Bars was against us and for their prince, and they didn’t worry about who the prince might be. They all just followed Bori-Bars and made this attack on us.”

  Grus whistled tunelessly between his teeth. “Sounds like something the Banished One could deliver, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, I can’t see anyone else who benefits more from it,” Pterocles said.

  “Neither can I,” Grus said. “Is there a counterspell?”

  “Maybe there is. I would have to work it out, though,” Pterocles replied. “We may not need one. You saw how these nomads started going at each other like a kettle of crabs when they realized they weren’t one big happy army after all. What do you want to bet the same thing is happening in their camps right now?”

  “That would be nice.” Grus had a vivid mental image of civil war breaking out anew among the Menteshe. He hoped it was a true image. But then, a moment later, it flickered and blew out. “If the Banished One wants to use this spell of his again, he can bring them together for another attack, can’t he?”

  Pterocles looked thoughtful. “That’s a good question, Your Majesty. I haven’t got a good answer for you. My guess would be that the spell wouldn’t work so well a second time; people would remember what had happened before. If he wanted to do it again, he might have to find warriors who hadn’t already been enchanted once. But I can’t prove any of that, not until I see the magic in action again. It’s only my feeling about how things are likely to work.”

  “All right. What you say seems reasonable to me—but I don’t know how much that has to do with the way magic works,” Grus said. “So the Menteshe may well come together against us in big armies again, regardless of whether Sanjar and Korkut kiss and make up.”

  “That’s the way it looks to me,” Pterocles said, “It’s happened once. I don’t see why it can’t happen again.”

  “Neither do I,” Grus said. “By Olor’s beard, though, I wish I did.” If the Menteshe kept throwing everything they had at his men … We’ll just have to beat all of them, that’s all. Then maybe they won’t be able to keep us out of Yozgat.

  Lanius waited anxiously for letters from the south. Grus’ accounts of what went on were bald but, as far as Lanius could tell, generally accurate. One of these years, some yet unborn king with a taste for history would find Grus’ letters in the archives and waste a lot of enjoyable time reconstructing his campaigns.

  Grus usually wrote a letter every few days. He didn’t have a precise pattern; even if he had, the vagaries of the courier system would have disrupted it. Lanius had learned not to worry when a week or ten days went by without word from the other king. All it meant was that a courier had been delayed, or perhaps that the Menteshe had waylaid one.

  When two and a half weeks passed, though, he began to get anxious. He wasn’t the only one around the palace who did, either. Sosia and Estrilda both snapped for what seemed no reason at all. Even Ortalis wondered aloud what was going on.

  Perhaps the most anxious person in the palace was Fulca. “What will happen if something goes wrong down there?” she asked Lanius. “Will they turn poor Otus back into a thrall?”

  She had lived almost
her whole life as a thrall, and had only a few months of freedom behind her. But she knew what freedom was worth—probably knew better than those who had never been without it.

  And her fear made Lanius remember the disasters that had overtaken other Avornan armies in years gone by when they tried to campaign south of the Stura. “I hope not,” was all he could tell her.

  “It would be terrible if they did!” Fulca exclaimed. “Terrible!”

  “You’re right. It would,” Lanius agreed gravely. “And it would be terrible for the whole kingdom, not just for Otus.”

  “Oh!” Fulca filled the word with more surprise than most people could pack into it. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

  If someone normal since birth had said such a thing, Lanius would have laughed at her, and not in a kind way, either. He forgave Fulca more readily; she had an excuse for worrying first about what concerned her most intimately. “The world is a bigger place than you know,” he said, as he might have to a child.

  Fulca nodded seriously, in a way no child would have. “Yes, Your Majesty. It looks that way.”

  Now—was the world big enough to include a courier bringing a new dispatch from Grus? For the next couple of days, it did not seem as though it was. The more time that went by, the more Lanius worried. When a courier did come up out of the south, the king all but tackled him. “Is all well with the army?” he demanded.

  The courier only shrugged and handed him the message tube he carried. “This will tell you better than I can, Your Majesty,” he replied. “I don’t know what it says. I just rode the last stage of the journey.”

  “Oh.” By contrast with Fulca, Lanius filled the little word with self-reproach. “Yes, of course.”

  He opened the tube, drew out the letter, and broke the seal. It was, he saw, Grus’, which showed a river-galley prow; at least the other king still lived. He unrolled the parchment and began to read. He didn’t know he’d made a sound until the courier asked, “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes—better than all right, in fact,” the king said. “A victory—a big victory.”

  “Ah. That’s good news.” The man’s grin held more than a little relief. Stories often spoke of kings who punished messengers bearing bad news. Lanius had never found anything in the archives that said any of those stories were true, but that didn’t stop people—and especially couriers—from believing them. A king could punish a courier for bad news; no doubt of that. Lanius hoped he wasn’t the sort of king who would, but how was a courier supposed to be sure of that?

  Stories also spoke of kings who rewarded messengers bearing good news. Lanius fumbled in the pouch he wore on his belt. Kings didn’t need to spend money very often, so he wasn’t sure what he had in there. His fingers closed on a coin. He drew it out. It was a copper. That wouldn’t do. He sneaked it back into the pouch and tried again. The next coin he found felt smoother between his thumb and forefinger, which seemed promising. When he pulled it out, it proved to be a goldpiece. That was what he wanted. With a certain amount of relief in his own smile, he handed it to the courier. “This for what the letter holds.”

  “Thank you very much, Your Majesty!” The man bowed himself almost double. Was he really as delighted as he looked? If he was, Lanius had given him too much. The king shrugged—he couldn’t take it back now and substitute half as much in silver.

  The courier bowed again and hurried away. Maybe he feared the king would try to get back some of what he had given. Lanius read through Grus’ letter again. The Menteshe have seen once more that they cannot stand against us, the other king wrote. If all goes as we hope and as it now appears, the way to Yozgat lies open.

  Lanius’ eyes went back over that last clause, not because he hadn’t understood it but because he liked it so much. The way to Yozgat lies open. Every Avornan ruler for centuries had dreamed of writing a sentence like that. Now Grus, about the least legitimate ruler Avornis had seen since the loss of the Scepter (with the possible exception of the jumped-up brigand who’d founded Lanius’ dynasty), had actually done it.

  And what would happen if the Avornan army reached the walls of Yozgat? Why, then, Lanius thought, I’ll write Grus and …

  “What have you got there?” asked someone behind the king.

  He jumped and turned. There stood Ortalis, a grin on his face because he’d startled Lanius. “It’s a letter from your father,” Lanius said.

  “Oh.” Ortalis’ grin disappeared. “Well, what does he say?”

  “He’s beaten the Menteshe south of the Zabat River, where he stopped last fall,” Lanius answered. “He’s beaten them, and the way to Yozgat lies open.” Yes, he did like the sound of that.

  “Good, I suppose.” Ortalis sounded much less impressed. Lanius wondered why, but not for long. The only thing Grus could do to make Ortalis happy was drop dead.

  When Grus first took the crown, Lanius had felt the same way, though his reasons were more personal than political. Not anymore. Now … Now things between him and Grus were—not so bad. The two of them were going in the same direction, anyhow. He didn’t waste time trying to explain that to Ortalis, who wasn’t. He said, “It’s an important victory,” and let it go at that.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Grus munched on dates candied in honey. He couldn’t decide if they were the most delicious things he’d ever eaten or just the most cloying. Hirundo and Pterocles both licked honey and sticky bits of date from their fingers. Grus hesitated only a moment before imitating them. He didn’t know what local manners said about eating dates, but he did know his fingers were sticking together.

  “We ought to import these,” Pterocles said—he evidently liked them.

  “Now maybe we will,” Grus answered.

  “Have to think up a fancier name than ‘dates,’” Hirundo said. “Have to think up a name that really makes people want to go out and spend their silver. How about something like ‘sugarfruit’?”

  “How about ‘winefruit’?” Pterocles said. “They do make wine from them.”

  “Have you tasted it?” Grus made a face. “It’s thick and it’s sweet and it’s nasty.”

  “I didn’t mind it that much,” the wizard said. “I don’t think it’s up to what we make from grapes, but it’s not bad.” His sweet tooth had to be stronger than Grus’.

  “And even if date wine is the foulest stuff this side of mule piss, who cares?” Hirundo said cheerfully. “Nobody north of the Stura’s going to know. A lot of the time, what things seem like is more important than what they really are.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Grus said.

  “Any wizard will tell you it’s true,” Pterocles said. “Illusion, appearance, belief … They’re the things that matter. How can you say for sure what’s real, anyhow?”

  “Hrmm,” Grus said—a discontented rumble down deep in his throat. The flickering lamplight and the smell of hot olive oil from the lamps inside his pavilion were real. So was the buzz of the mosquitoes that got in despite the netting in front of the flap. So were the pressure on his backside from the stool where he perched and the ache in his thighs from another day in the saddle. He ate another date and spat out the seed. The taste was real, too, and so was the way the honey coated the inside of his mouth.

  But then Hirundo said, “A lot of spells are nothing but illusion, aren’t they?”

  “Not quite nothing but,” Pterocles answered, “but illusion’s no small part of them. A lot of spells make illusions turn real.”

  “How can you say for sure what’s real?” Grus enjoyed throwing Pterocles’ words back at him. He enjoyed it even more when the wizard turned red and spluttered and didn’t answer.

  “I’ll tell you what I want to be real,” Hirundo said. “I want one more good victory against the Menteshe to be real before we get to Yozgat. If we beat them again—do a proper job of beating them, I mean—they won’t be so hot to come breathing down our necks.”

  “Do you want to provoke them into attacking
us, then?” Grus asked. “Can we set an ambush for them?”

  “I’d love to try,” Hirundo said. “I’ll laugh if we can bring it off, too. It’s what the cursed nomads always try on us. By the gods, paying them back in their own coin would be sweet.”

  “Yes, by the gods. By the gods in the heavens,” Grus said. They hadn’t been invoked much in these parts lately. “Not by …” He let that hang. Hirundo nodded. He understood what Grus wasn’t saying. Grus went on, “Let’s look for a chance to do that and see how it goes.”

  “No guarantees,” Hirundo said. “A lot will depend on the terrain and the weather and how we bump into the nomads or they bump into us.”

  “I understand. It’s always that way,” Grus said, and the general nodded again. Grus wished Hirundo hadn’t mentioned the weather. So far this campaigning season, it had been good. Hirundo reminded him it didn’t have to stay that way.

  He worried about summertime rain. That could turn the roads to porridge and slow the Avornans to a crawl. Summer rain this far south wasn’t just unseasonable; it would be the next thing to miraculous. Of course, that didn’t necessarily stop the Banished One.

  Rain, though, wasn’t what the army met a few days later. A hot wind blew out of the south, a hot wind full of clouds of dust and sand. The grit got into Grus’ eyes. He tied a scarf over his mouth and nose to keep from swallowing and breathing so much of it. That helped, but less than he wished it would have.

  All through the army, men were doing the same thing. Some of them tried to tie cloths over the animals’ mouths and nostrils, too. The horses and mules didn’t like that. Neither did the oxen drawing the supply wagons.

  Grus thought about asking Pterocles whether the sandstorm was natural or came from the Banished One. He shrugged, coughing as he did so. What was the point? Natural or not, the army had to go through it. Pterocles couldn’t do anything about the weather.

  It went on and on and on. Swirling dust blotted the sun from the sky. From blue, the dome overhead went an ugly grayish yellow. Hirundo finally had to order the army to halt. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he shouted above the howl of the wind, “but I don’t have any idea which way south is anymore.”